Liquid Crystal Elastomers

Our new paper is online in Journal of Applied Mechanics. We exolore the thermomechancial coupling in polydomain liquid crystal elastomers. https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/appliedmechanics/article/doi/10.1....

A complimentary PDF is available: https://www.novatechsetproofs.com/authors/ASME/JAM-23-1288.pdf .

Xueju (Sophie) Wang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Polymer Program, Institute of Materials Science, University of Connecticut

Dr John Biggins is establishing a new experimental and theoretical research activity in the area of liquid crystalline elastomers and glasses (LCE/Gs). These remarkable soft-solids can undergo large reversible and programmed shape changes upon heating or illumination, and the group will target novel mechanics and "artificial-muscle" applications in shape-changing devices.

Dr John Biggins (supervisor) and Prof Mark Warner FRS (co-supervisor) are searching for a talented theorist with interests in mechanics and geometry to work on the design of soft liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) machines. The studentship is part of a new Marie Sklodowska-Curie training network called storm-bots, which will encompass 13 students across Europe working on the design and creation soft LCE machines. The soft, anisotropic materials of the project, liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and glasses, contract along their director on heating/illumination.

In our recent work, we construct a hybrid light-powered tensegrity robot composed of both hard and soft materials. The tensegrity robot shows great scalability, deployability, impact-mitigation capability, high load capacity, and can be precisely controlled to move on multiterrains. It is an example of combining interesting structures and interesting actuating materials in soft robotics.

DOI: 10.1039/C7RA10619J   RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 52510-52516